PBL NEWS Season’s Greetings from PBL Season’s Greetings from PBL PBL, Norwich Research Park, Colney Lane, Norwich, Norfolk NR4 7UH, UK Tel: +44(0)1603 456500 Fax: +44(0)1603 456552 www.pbltechnology.com Innovation in life sciences IP protection Funds and manages patent filing and Builds complementary technology packages Markets technology to commercial users Concludes and monitors technology licences Manages and mentors the formation of new technology- based businesses PBL News - Issue 25 - Dec 2012 Now in its tenth year of operation, PBL's TEC Scheme continues to be an extremely successful route for promoting new plant bioscience innovations to industry. In the past three years alone, PBL has offered through the scheme 25 new innovations from 17 different public research institutions in 8 different countries around the world. These include innovations offered by PBL on behalf of , the technology transfer organisation of the French national agricultural research organisation, INRA. Since January 2010, 37 evaluation licences have been taken by the industry members of the TEC Scheme. Nine of these evaluation agreements also included options to obtain a commercial licence at a later date. Also over the same period, 15 commercial licences have been signed by PBL for technologies promoted through the TEC Scheme, which remains extremely popular with the plant technology industry. For details of the PBL TEC Scheme, please click . INRA Transfert here The US Patent Office has issued a further patent to PBL from our RNAi patent estate, the fourth to issue during 2012. US patent no. was granted at the end of October. PBL now holds a portfolio of six issued US patents that represent the key to many applications in the field of RNAi, covering the methods of using siRNA molecules of 20 to 30 nucleotides to effect gene silencing as well as the siRNA molecules themselves and methods to detect siRNA. For more information, please click or contact Dr Lars von Borcke ([email protected]). 8,299,235 here PBL Tech ID: 99.190 Grant of further RNAi patents Successes of PBL TEC Scheme: the figures speak for themselves In October 2012, PBL and OBP ( ) signed a research and development licence for OBP to use the HT-CPMV system developed by George Lomonossoff and Frank Sainsbury at the John Innes Centre to develop vaccines for use in important animal health applications. Previous tests have already shown the successful vaccination of sheep with a blue tongue virus vaccine. The agreement includes the option to obtain a commercial licence, if the development phase is successful. Please click the following links for previous news items: For more information, please contact Dr Lars von Borcke ([email protected]). Onderstepoort Biological Products SOC Limited March 2012 January 2011 August 2009 PBL Tech ID: 05.386 & 07.439 - - . CPMV Virus Plant-made Protein Platform: PBL and OBP enter licence for animal health applications In 2010 we announced our technology development partnerships with the nd the ( direction, PBL is delighted to announce taking on our first new technology invented in a Chinese research institution. In October, PBL started marketing a new plant biotechnology innovation from one of the leading Chinese Academy of Sciences institutes, the he new technology has already been well received by the international agricultural biotechnology industry. Jilin Academy of Agricultural Sciences Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology (JAAS) a IB-CAS), under which these partners will make and test transgenic crop plants containing technologies from PBL's portfolio. In a further new (IGDB). T For more information, please contact Dr Jan Chojecki ([email protected]). PBL in China: PBL to promote new technology from IGDB, Beijing Triterpene biosynthesis in algae Anne Osbourn at the John Innes Centre has been awarded a SynBio SPARK Award. The project will test the potential of employing microalgae for triterpene production, by using higher plant enzymes covered by PBL patents, to make and augment triterpene scaffolds. It has the potential to pave the way for a low cost, sustainable approach to producing high-value chemical products used as pharmaceutical scaffolds. Using microalgae as a platform has the potential to dramatically reduce costs for the production of a wide range of triterpenes that are currently prohibitively expensive and in some instances not commercially available at present. For more information, please contact Dr Lars von Borcke ([email protected]).